Sports (Professional)

Articles and Resources

QUOTE: women have been playing baseball since long before they had the right to vote. As the national pastime went professional, women were forced out of it — and into softball. Title IX, the 1972 federal law that prohibits sex discrimination in education, also protects equal access to and funding of sports for boys and girls at the school level, and girls have been fighting to play baseball — with lawsuits, if necessary — since the 1970s.

QUOTE: Qatar's construction frenzy ahead of the 2022 World Cup is on course to cost the lives of at least 4,000 migrant workers before a ball is kicked, the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC) has claimed....The annual death toll among those working on building sites could rise to 600 a year – almost a dozen a week – unless the Doha government makes urgent reforms, it says.

QUOTE: Recent match-fixing scandals have centered on South Korea and South Africa, but Europol believes the highest levels of the game are now no longer safe with alleged corruption in two Champions League matches discovered, including one played in England, with 680 games in all being probed across the globe. "This is the work of a suspected organized crime syndicate based in Asia and operated with criminal networks around Europe,"

QUOTE: In fining the Spurs $250,000 Friday, Stern insisted that Popovich had disrespected the game and its fans by resting his best players while fielding a short-handed squad....Playing a fourth game in five nights, he did what he has done before: sent home his three veteran stars — Tim Duncan, Manu Ginobili and Tony Parker — and added Danny Green, a starting guard, for good measure.

QUOTE: Fairness—or lack of it—is central to human relationships at every level, from a marriage between two people to disputes involving war and peace among the nations of the world. I believe fairness is what we need to focus on, not inequality—though I readily acknowledge that high inequality in wealth and income is corrosive to society.

QUOTE: a study published in July in The Journal of Experimental Social Psychology by two researchers in psychology at Northwestern University tested the question of bias in unsportsmanlike conduct penalties called after touchdowns....“The same pattern of blacks being punished more than whites seems to hold true both in the N.F.L. and in this experiment,” Livingston said. “I would conclude that the results are generalizable to N.F.L. referees.”

QUOTE: The New Orleans Saints admitted Tuesday to paying bonuses for hits that would knock opposing players out of a game....former NBA star Charles Barkley said he had taken part in a bounty program during his basketball playing days in the 1980s.

QUOTE: In our college admissions process, especially, we punish Asian Americans who hew too closely to the stereotype. Rather than rewarding students for their individual effort and achievement, we effectively penalize them for doing so well as a group.

QUOTE: The English Premier League is considered the world’s best club competition and features many of the top international players. Two-thirds are foreign-born. Racial sensitivity in the league has increased substantially in recent years, and the atmosphere is considered far more embracing than leagues in Spain and Italy. Yet, the Terry and Suárez cases indicate that English officials are still troubled by some abusive on-the-field behavior.

QUOTE: ...Berman characterized the N.C.A.A. as “an uncaring cartel that takes care of its own” and added, “This whole notion of protecting amateurism — that’s a farce.”...Berman said he wanted to force the N.C.A.A. to arrange insurance that would provide for training and evaluation for players and follow-up care for former athletes.

QUOTE: The unrest in part reflects an increasingly violent Argentine society, where street crime has been on the rise. But much of the violence can be traced to hostilities between rival factions of barra bravas, the Argentine version of hooligan fan groups that use fists, firearms and knives, and operate like mini-mafias. They engage in legal and illegal businesses, including selling drugs, often with the cover and complicity of the police, politicians and club officials...

QUOTE: Twenty-one years ago the ugly Shoal Creek controversy was supposed to change the face of golf. The revelation that many of the country's top golf clubs had exclusionary membership practices based on race led to a period of painful self-examination for the sport....Woods remains the only African-American on Tour, and, as Williams made graphically clear, he is still defined by his blackness.

QUOTE: The act of diving, as the fake falls are called, is crafty or cynical, artful gamesmanship or outright cheating, depending on one’s view. Although the use of the ruse was clearly evident on Sunday during the United States’ riveting World Cup quarterfinal victory over Brazil, the relative lack of this tactic in women’s soccer was captured in a study conducted at Wake Forest University.

QUOTE: For nearly three decades, Warner, 68, has also been a powerful but polarizing figure in regional and international soccer circles. On Monday, he resigned his positions as the vice president of FIFA, soccer’s world governing body, and as the president of soccer’s North American, Central American and Caribbean region, known as Concacaf. He had been accused in a bribery scheme involving as much as $1 million and had been suspended from all soccer activities...

QUOTE: [At the 2011 French Open] There were three incidents that called into question the game’s regulations as they’re currently devised. [medical status of cramps, automated line calls, enforcing time limits]

QUOTE: (Sean Avery) recently recorded a video, becoming one of only a few active athletes in American team sports to voice support for gay rights, and is believed to be the first in New York to publicly advocate for same-sex marriage... Homosexual slurs remain in use to insult opponents and officials.

QUOTE: Charitable funds have gone misspent, jobs have been lost, and the reputation of one of college football’s most prominent organizations has been sullied... The ultimate (and often unfair) question in situations like this is, Where was the board?

QUOTE: Zdeno Chara, the Boston Bruins player who shouldered Max Pacioretty of Montreal into a stanchion at the end of the players’ bench and seriously injured him, was not suspended by league disciplinary officials in the aftermath of the incident, and their decision was supported by N.H.L. Commissioner Gary Bettman.

QUOTE: Since the NFL switched to its current eight-division format in 2002, which made the possibility of an 8-8 division winner more likely, three times have teams won their division with only a 9-7 mark. One of those teams, last season’s Buccaneers, went to the playoffs while the Browns sat home with a 10-6 record. This season, there’s a chance that seven teams could finish with better records than two division winners, but not make the postseason.

QUOTE: For the life of me, I can’t figure out why Wall Street bankers, traders and executives get paid so much money year after year for doing jobs that rarely require them to innovate, enlighten or put their own capital at risk, and have the nasty habit of periodically sinking our economy.

QUOTE: with two outs in the ninth inning in Detroit, Tigers pitcher Armando Galarraga was on the cusp of throwing a perfect game when the first-base umpire, Jim Joyce, called the Cleveland Indians’ Jason Donald safe at first base. It didn’t look close....Should there be greater use of video replays in baseball to prevent such errors?

QUOTE: Now it is a month into the 2010 season, and Ortiz is once again off to a terrible start....Should Ortiz be released for the good of the team? After less than 30 games and a hundred at bats? Is that fair? What is fair, in this situation? Well, it depends what you mean by “fair”...

QUOTE: California’s workers’ compensation system provides a unique, and relatively unknown, haven for retired professional athletes among the 50 states, allowing hundreds of long-retired veterans each year to file claims for injuries sustained decades before. Players need not have played for California teams or be residents of the state; they had to participate in just one game in the state to be eligible to receive lifetime medical care for their injuries from the teams and their insurance carriers.

QUOTE: Congress is investigating whether laws, health agency resources and manufacturing guidelines are adequate to protect the public from products that illegally contain steroids but masquerade as dietary supplements.

QUOTE: The Southeastern Conference, home to some of the nation’s most prominent and lucrative university athletic programs, has issued rules in the past week prohibiting fans from distributing photographs or video of its games in real time for commercial use.

QUOTE: Now officials in Delaware and New Jersey, facing their own budget problems, say it's time for a bolder move: full-scale, legalized sports betting... The plans are being resisted by the nation's four major pro sports leagues — the NFL, the NBA, the NHL and Major League Baseball — as well as the NCAA.

QUOTE: Confronted with cases of identity and age falsification by Latin American baseball prospects, Major League Baseball is conducting genetic testing on some promising young players and their parents.

QUOTE: . While some colleges accept considerable responsibility for [athletes'] medical claims, many others assume almost none, according to a review of public documents from a cross section of universities and interviews with current and former athletes, trainers, administrators and N.C.A.A. officials.

QUOTE: 1. “I trained a whole weekend to learn this procedure"....2. “I make a mint off other surgeons’ mistakes”....3. “Sure, I can turn back the clock, but it just starts ticking again"....4. “You’d be better off spending this money on a good therapist.”

QUOTE: As the N.F.L. enters the final weekend of the season, Turner is not the only one who may not be ready to forgive and forget. Three controversial calls by officials from this season loom large in the chase for the league’s 12 playoff berths.

QUOTE: as the first high-profile Japanese baseball prospect to turn down his nation’s leagues to entertain offers from Major League Baseball teams, he has found himself straining relations between baseball entities on two continents, with accusations of talent raiding and defiance of decades-long understandings.

QUOTE: the shrieks, cries and shouts of N.B.A. players as they try to put the ball in the basket. In part, the emoting is designed to deceive, with players trying to persuade referees they were fouled in the act of shooting, even if they were not.

QUOTE: "Nothing can be done. I understand that after that whistle blows, you can't speculate, `Well, did everybody get the best shot at recovering the ball if some of them heard the whistle and some of them didn't?'"

QUOTE: The Tour de France lost one of its top teams Thursday when Italian rider Riccardo Ricco tested positive for a new-generation variant of the blood-boosting drug EPO and his Saunier Duval-Scott team withdrew from the race. Ricco, the winner of two stages in the Tour’s first nine days and in ninth place in the race so far, tested positive after the fourth stage of the race last week, according to the French Anti-Doping Agency.

QUOTE: Now she's at the center of a $225 million lawsuit filed against the organization, in which she alleges sexual and racial discrimination, sexual harassment and wrongful termination. She claims she was called demeaning names, subjected to sexual advances -- including two male co-workers allegedly exposing themselves to her -- and made the brunt of graphic and lewd jokes.

QUOTE: A Congressional oversight committee Thursday submitted questions to Major League Baseball and its players union asking whether steroid testing was suspended during the 2004 season and, if so, why they did not tell Congress about it during a 2005 public hearing.

QUOTE: That's what Tim Donaghy, the rogue referee who is fast becoming commissioner David Stern's worst nightmare, has brought about with his stunning accusations of biased officiating, fixed playoff games and other improprieties. He has put it all in play -- all the suspicions, all the skepticism, all the whispers that something about the NBA just doesn't feel completely on the up-and-up.

QUOTE: A company that offers fantasy baseball games on the Internet has won its battle to use the names and performance statistics of Major League Baseball players without permission and without paying licensing fees.

QUOTE: Today, the entire sport of cycling is where Millar was four years ago. Rocked for decades by drug scandals -- most recently during last year's Tour de France, cycling's marquee event -- the sport has hit rock bottom, according to riders, managers, cycling officials and analysts. And with this year's Tour de France and Summer Olympics approaching, the sport can either come clean and heal itself, or continue to self-destruct.

QUOTE: Last Monday, a report commissioned by the major tennis governing bodies recommended that 45 matches played in the last five years be investigated because betting patterns gave a “strong indication” that gamblers were profiting from inside information. And those matches, the report said, may be only the tip of the iceberg.

QUOTE: A snippy legal battle between the Washington Nationals and the District government has been raging behind the scenes since February. Even now, a quarter of the way into the first season at Nats Park, the team's owners are demanding that the city cough up $100,000 a day in damages because, according to the Nationals, the stadium was not completed in time for Opening Night in March.

QUOTE: agreement reached last month between lawyers for the N.F.L. and Walsh. The agreement indemnifies Walsh from all future legal fees. Walsh’s tapes show that the Patriots recorded the signals of offensive and defensive coaches in regular-season games...

QUOTE: The death, the arrests and the measured response of the JSA have cast a cold light on the closed world of sumo, laying bare the bullying, brutality and hierarchical torment that are routine in the self-governed sport, which is 2,000 years old and has been a profitable professional endeavor for nearly four centuries.

QUOTE: ...an era of doping may be looming in academia, and it has ignited a debate about policy and ethics that in some ways echoes the national controversy over performance enhancement accusations against elite athletes like Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens.

QUOTE: ...the numbers [of major leaguers baseball players claiming therapeutic-use exemptions for attention deficit disorder] disclosed by Mr. Tierney suggest that other players are using attention deficit disorder as a means to use stimulants that are not available without a prescription and, since the beginning of the 2006 season, cannot be used by players without a medical exemption.

QUOTE: Drug testers contracted by the league routinely alert team officials a day or more before their arrival at ballparks for what is supposed to be random, unannounced testing of players. By eliminating the surprise factor, the practice undermines the integrity of the testing program, antidoping experts said.